The Mistress Of Normandy (19 page)

Angry beyond caution, she blurted out, “How can you be so certain? Suppose I carry Lazare’s child, the rightful heir?”

He laughed harshly. “My father swore he’d never lie with you.”

“The sheets of our marriage bed were duly examined. The marriage was consummated.”

He clamped both hands on her shoulders, squeezed until she winced. “You’d best be lying.”

She said nothing. The bruising pressure of his fingers abated. He’s a fool, she thought. I’ll best him in this. Turning the subject, she said, “What do the
hobelars
report?”

“The Englishman and his sorry contingent have apparently given up on Burgundy’s timely return from Compiègne. They’ve repaired to the coastal hamlet of Eu, where an English cog has docked. Doubtless they’ll soon seek their own safe shores.”

She twisted to face him. “I’m surprised you and Gaucourt haven’t mounted an attack to speed them on their way.”

His gaze shifted restlessly about the counting chamber. “Mustn’t divide our forces.”

She hid her relief behind the veil of her hair. The true reason, of course, was that both Gervais and Gaucourt feared her uncle. “Why don’t you go to bed?”

“Why don’t you come with me?” He laughed at her outraged scowl. “We could be good together, you and I. You’re so efficient at managing the château, and I am so adept at inspiring loyalty. Think of it. Together we could—”

“Save your dreams for Macée.”

“She’s become a burr beneath my saddle. If it weren’t for her, you and I could be married.”

No, we couldn’t, she thought darkly. I am already wed. “
Do
you never cease your plotting?”

He chuckled. “Never.”

Lazare forfeited his life for plotting, she thought, but said nothing.

“I’m off,” said Gervais. “’Tis May Day. I’d best go arm myself for the tilting. Gaucourt has called in all his
hobelars
for the holiday.” Gervais reached across the table, grasped a lock of her hair, and twirled the strand in his fingers. “And you, I trow, shall be Queen of the May.”

She pulled back. “So I have ever been.” In sooth she had not the heart for the role this year. But to relinquish the title to Macée would be to admit to a secondary position at Bois-Long. And that Lianna would never do.

“I’ll see you at the tilting yard,” Gervais said. “I’ve an announcement to make before the tourney,” he added cryptically, and left the counting house.

Bothered by Gervais’s cocksure mood, she put away her stylus and corked the inkwell. In a spirit more suited to mourning than to merrymaking, she went outside where, yawning, the castle folk were coming out to greet the May.

Crouched on a weeding stool in the garden, Mère Brûlot watched a group of children as they picked flowers to weave into wreaths. For a moment Lianna stood captivated by the fresh, smiling faces and laughing voices of the children. The golden glow of early morn bathed the scene in soft, diffuse light.

In his eager foraging, one sturdy boy trampled a row of blossoms.

“Mind the pease,” said Lianna. Irritation, left over from her confrontation with Gervais, edged her voice.

The child looked down at the vines crushed beneath his bare feet. Quickly he scrambled to Mère Brûlot’s side.

“Nom de Dieu,”
said Lianna, “the flowers all but choke the food.”

“You ordered them yourself, my lady,” Mère Brûlot reminded her.

“I can’t think why,” Lianna murmured. But in sooth she knew. She’d been in love when she’d ordered the flowers. Now her dreams had died, strangled by Rand’s betrayal. Annoyed at herself for subjecting the child to her temper, she gave him a quick hug and walked away. In the greensward, the maypole stood like a flower-crowned sentinel, ribbons and streamers blowing in the fragrant breeze. Soon the shaft would be a centerpiece for merriment, circled by hand-clasped dancers weaving the ribbons as they sang to the coming of spring.

Dressed in finery, Lianna would be expected to oversee the festivities. People came from the towns of Abbeville and Pont-St.-Rémy to compete at footraces, hoop rolling, and tilting. Costumed chessmen would enact their game on the checkerboard lawn. Others would play at morelles, attempting to win an anklet of bells by aligning colorful balls on the game green.

She must behave as if this spring were no different from seasons past. As if she were still Aimery’s placid, self-possessed daughter, and not the secret bride of an English invader.

By midmorning, guests thronged the western fields. Spectators pressed for a better view of the tournament lists. More arrived on foot, mounted, or in carts. Overdressed, overwarm, and nauseated, Lianna sat with Macée in the open pavilion beside the jousting field. Behind them, Bonne sat eating sweetmeats. The field was surrounded by a stout fence, which in turn was encircled by a higher fence, the space between crammed with squires and knights.

“Gervais wears my token,” said Macée, pointing.

Armed and mounted, he waited behind two cords stretched across the lists. A wisp of ruby silk fluttered on his sleeve.

“Did you give yours to the Sire de Gaucourt?” asked Macée.

Lianna shook her head. “I have no favorite...among these men, or anywhere.”

Bonne gasped. A fierce look from Lianna held the maid silent. Macée sniffed and turned her attention to the lists. Heralds marched beneath fluttering pennons; horsemen checked their blunted and rebated lances and swords. Here was the spectacle of chivalry at its most colorful, and at its emptiest. Men rode at one another for no better purpose than to knock from the saddle an opponent who was not an opponent. All for the sake of winning a wreath for their heads, a string of bells for their ankles.

Spying a lone figure on the distant battlement of the castle, Macée shaded her eyes. “Chiang,” she said. “Doubtless he’s too busy with his powders and potions to join us.”

“Your husband has ordered a
feu d’artifice
tonight. Even if Chiang wished to watch the jousting, he’d be too busy mixing his charges.” She lifted her hand to wave at him; distractedly he waved back and disappeared behind a gunport.

Of late Chiang seemed withdrawn, uncommunicative, and uncharacteristically obedient to Gervais’s whims. And all the while he seemed tense with waiting.

Restless and inexplicably nervous, she shifted her attention to the pageantry of the tourney. Peasants and tradesmen milled about, laughing, eating gingermen and quaffing cider specially brewed for the maying, tinted light green with parsley. Still more visitors appeared on the west road, perhaps a score and ten of them. Highsided, penlike carts lumbered behind stout
haquenée
horses. The newcomers, she noted absently, must feel as hot as she. To a man, they wore long cloaks.

“Here’s the parade of arms.” Macée straightened her hennin and leaned forward as trumpets blared a salute. Led by Gervais and Gaucourt, the knights rode down the lists, seventy men crowding the fenced area like a sea of gold. Armor caught the sunlight and magnified the glare so that, momentarily dazzled, Lianna shaded her eyes and looked away.

The crowd buzzed and then fell into an expectant hush; new arrivals moved among them, pressed close to the outer fences. A few, she saw with mild irritation, had rudely jostled others aside. One of them, a priest in brown robe and knotted scourge, haggled with a young boy over a prime seat at the head of the lists. Most unbecoming for a cleric, she thought, as was that gauntlet of leather....

Lianna jumped to her feet.

Macée snatched at her wrist, pulling her back. “You’re blocking my view. Now hush up and listen. Gervais spent hours learning to recite his proclamation.”

“He could simply read it if he’d learn his letters,” Bonne muttered.

Macée scowled. “Be silent while your lord speaks.”

Lianna ignored Bonne’s cheeky retort. Trembling in every limb, she combed the crowd with her eyes. Her hands clenched the fabric of her embroidered cotte. With mingled hope and dread she watched the strangers press in on the lists, not with the idle curiosity of spectators, but with the single-minded intent of predators. They perched on the fence or took up positions at the entrance and exit points of the yard. The tallest of the cloaked and hooded men climbed the outer fence, braced himself at the top. She knew that masculine form, the easy grace with which he moved.

Rand.

Obviously he’d come to take the castle. She should act, call a warning. The heavily armed tourneyers could finish him with a few blows.

Gervais droned on heedlessly, enumerating the rules of combat. “Foul play results in forfeiture of the prize.... No rushing a man when he’s down....”

Everyone listened to Gervais; none noticed the secret movements of Rand’s men. Warn the knights, she told herself. For the sake of Bois-Long and France, warn them. But the words stuck, unuttered, in her throat. Not even for her home, her country, could she bring about the Englishman’s death.

He lifted his hand. As one, the visitors flung off their cloaks, planted the bowstaves the garments had concealed, and swiftly nocked their arrows.

“At day’s end the champion shall win the hon—” Gervais’s voice broke off. A collective gasp rose from the crowd. For a moment the scene froze like a painted tableau. Then mothers hastened their children to safety; a few men cast nervous glances over their shoulders and slunk away.

The figure on the fence shrugged out of his cloak.

Sunlight glinted in his golden hair and on the device of the leopard rampant that adorned his
cotte d’armes.
He held his ready bow with strength and assurance. Lianna felt a sudden, involuntary pride in her husband, the father of her child. Behind him, a youth lifted a pennon emblazoned with the motto she’d seen on the talisman:
A vaillans coeurs riens impossible.
She was fast learning to respect the words.

To valiant hearts, nothing is impossible. Not even the conquering of seventy armed knights.

Macée clutched frantically at Lianna’s sleeve. “It’s the Englishman, the one who escaped.”

“And that cheeky herald,” added Bonne, pointing at Jack Cade. “What in the name of St. Denis is—”

“He cannot do this,” said Macée. “Gervais was going to have the people swear fealty to him today, to us—”

“Lay down your arms.” Rand’s voice boomed like thunder.

Incensed, Gervais spat on the ground. “Never, Englishman. You’ll die where you stand.”

Gaucourt had gone momentarily tense; then he seemed to relax as he finished a silent tally of the bowmen surrounding him. “Idiots,” he bellowed to the fearful crowd. His caparisoned horse sidled beneath him; a light breeze ruffled the long plume on the knight’s helm. “What can these motley peasants and English
god-dons
do against our armored strength?”

He turned to his men. “Arm yourselves,” he commanded. The knights tossed blunts and rebates off their weapons.

Rand nodded briefly at Jack Cade, who guarded the exit point. He let fly his arrow. Like a razor borne aloft, it neatly severed the curling panache on Gaucourt’s helm. Gasps rose from the onlookers.

Bonne clapped her hands and sent the Englishman a look of pure admiration. When several people turned and scowled her into silence, she quickly abandoned her applause.

Gaucourt shook a gauntleted fist. “You’ll pay for that! You’re carrion!” He gestured at the castle. “Your head will rot on that wall.”

“Lay down your arms,” Rand said again, this time with a biting edge of impatience in his voice.

Rage reddened Gaucourt’s face within his helm. “Whoreson!” He yanked a pennon from one of the heralds and raised it aloft to signal his men to charge.

Split seconds later an arrow pierced the staff of the pennon, cutting through the wood.

Within the fenced lists, the mounted men shifted warily on their horses. Swearing and spurring his horse, Gaucourt galloped madly toward Jack. The archer leaned far over the fence and yanked a lance from one of the knights. Thighs gripping the rail, he set the lance against his shoulder. The point met Gaucourt’s chest; the battle commander fell with a clatter from his horse, and Jack tumbled over the fence. Unencumbered by armor, Jack scrambled to his feet, grabbed Gaucourt’s sword, and pressed the point to his face. French knights moved forward but shrank back when the sword nicked their commander’s cheek.

“’Tis no game,” someone in the crowd murmured.

No, thought Lianna, feeling cold and shivery despite the heat, ’tis no game. My castle will fall to Rand.

Gervais raised his arm as if to shake his fist, glanced at the broken pennon, and seemed to think better of it. “Bois-Long is mine, I say!” With a flourish he produced a parchment scroll. “King Charles has invested Bois-Long to
me.
”

So this was the secret Gervais had tantalized her with in the counting house. The French king had proclaimed Gervais Sire de Bois-Long. Damn the madman, she thought. After all her loyalty to him, he thanked her thus. Her life was but one barter after another, from one man to another....

“The letter is signed and sealed by King Charles himself,” Gervais yelled, “and—”

Calmly Rand loosed an arrow. It snatched the parchment from Gervais’s hand and skewered it, quivering, to the ground.

“That is what I think of your king’s nonsensical investitures.” Nonchalantly he drew a second arrow and nocked it in place.

Macée fainted.

As Bonne attended to the limp form, Lianna stared, fascinated, at Rand. Here again was a facet of him she did not know. Not the lover in the woods, nor yet the raging beast in the ravine, but a cold, calculating warrior certain of victory.

Training his arrow on Gervais, Rand called, “You are defeated. There be but two exits to the lists. You’ll trample one another trying to break free. As for being protected by armor,
eh bien...
” His eyes flicked to the parchment, then to the helpless Gaucourt. “Your steel serves you ill.”

“What do you want, Englishman?”

“What is mine. Lay down your arms.” Rand’s voice rang with finality. Some of his men, covered by his ready archers, jumped into the lists and set to disarming the knights. Their commander in peril, they made no resistance.